WPLUGBoard/Meeting-20120904

Venue Info

Meeting to be held at The Coffee Tree Roasters at 5524 Walnut Street in Shadyside, Pittsburgh, PA 15232. 6:00pm, Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Agenda

• Approve minutes of August 7 board meeting
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Minutes

DRAFT

The regular meeting of the Board of Directors of the Western Pennsylvania Linux Users Group was held on Tuesday, September 4, 2012, at 6:05 PM, at Coffee Tree Roasters in Shadyside. The regular presiding officer was in the Chair and the Secretary was present. The minutes of the August 7, 2012 meeting were deferred for approval until the next meeting.

The Chair reports that Software Freedom Day will occur later in the month on September 15th, and that WPLUG elections will occur on October 13th. The Chair has nothing else to report, but that he would like to discuss online payment on the WPLUG site later in the meeting. He would like to check with the Treasurer if the check to Patty Doody for room use at Wilkins School has cleared as well.

The Vice Chair reported that there are no new developments about WPLUG's involvement with Software Freedom Day, and that if there is anything that WPLUG will be doing, action will need to happen quite soon.

The Secretary reported that currently there are 18 members.

The Treasurer reported that the current balance is around 600 dollars. He will discuss more about Stripe during talk about the Internet Committee.

The Event Committee reported that if WPLUG is to participate in Software Freedom Day, the venue will likely need to be at the Pittsburgh Public Market, like last year. People will be needed to burn DVDs and CDs for distribution for people that visit the WPLUG table. Having two Linux distributions available would be great, and it would also be nice to get other swag as well. Ubuntu is not an option, as they now charge for their media. The Treasurer will check about Fedora, and other distributions such as openSUSE will be explored.

It would also be nice to have WPLUG signs, and maybe maybe a banner if somebody could do that. The Vice Chair mentioned that he'd be interested in taking on that task. Stickers of some kind would be great as well if that can be done quickly and cheaply. It would also be good to have some sort of demo software or a movie playing to help draw in people to the WPLUG table. It won't be doable to have the WPLUG Software Freedom Day event on September 15th, so it will be pushed until September 22nd.

Last year at Software Freedom Day, WPLUG gave out 45 CDs/DVDs. The turnout was quite good, and it would be great to see that kind of attendance/interest once again. Burned copies of the OpenDisc will be provided as well, and the artwork on the Software Freedom Day website can be used to help make promotional fliers and/or posters.

In addition to Software Freedom Day, in October, WPLUG will be holding a general user meeting that will have a focus on nominations for elections that will occur at the November meeting. Word about the October meeting will have to go out soon. Thus far there is no confirmed solitary speaker for the October meeting, so perhaps having a series of lightning talks should be explored. The Treasurer mentioned he'd be interested in giving a lightning talk about CouchDB, but several others will need to participate to make this successful.

Lastly, there was some talk about being sure to promote other groups on the WPLUG site, such as SNAPGH, and Perl and Ruby groups in the area.

The Investigating Committee has nothing to report.

The Wilkins School Network Committee has nothing to report.

The Internet Committee reported that there hasn't been any moving forward with using Stripe yet, but it will definitely happen. Having this in place will be great for getting new members, as well as making membership renewals quite easy. Having this will enable people to sign up online, which is definitely much easier than the current paper-only alternative. The cost is 2.5% + 30 cents per transaction, but having an online membership sign-up will likely cover this cost due to additional people becoming members. To make this all happen, various people in the Internet Committee will have to do the programming and the integration with MediaWiki.

The renewal for Linode hosting has been completed as well, and WPLUG actually received a credit for renewing before the term was finished. There was also 20 dollar of credit applied to the WPLUG account due to a referral credit.

Other than Stripe, the Internet Committee reported that the switch to IPV6 has not yet happened, but could likely happen this year.

The Newsletter Committee has nothing to report.

The Public Relations Committee has nothing to report.

There are no Special Orders.

There is no Unfinished Business to discuss.

There is no New Business to discuss.

The meeting adjourned at 7:02 PM.

Joseph Prostko
Secretary, Western Pennsylvania Linux Users Group

DRAFT